Market Place

Digital Access

Home Delivery

Local news, prep sports, Chicago sports, local and regional entertainment, business, home and lifestyle, food, classified and more! News you use every day! Daily, Daily including the e-Edition or e-Edition only.

Text Alerts

Choose your news! Select the text alerts you want to receive: breaking news, prep sports scores, school closings, weather, and more. Text alerts are a free service from SaukValley.com, but text rates may apply.

What you should know about house paint

When it comes to house paint, there is a vast ocean of different types and applications.

Ace Hardware and Rental, in Dixon, carries several different lines of paint to choose from: Ace’s private label paint - the Royal, Clark & Kensington, Valspar’s Aspire and Optimist, and the Magnolia line, according to store owner/manager Rich Kelly.

“The Royal line, which Ace has had for years, is excellent and long-lasting,” Kelly says. “The Clark and Kensington — a newer line — is paint and primer in one, so you don’t have to prime first to get a good result. That’s rated highly by leading groups of paint testers.”

Valspar’s Optimist is nearly odor-free and gives very good coverage, and the Magnolia line by Joanna Gaines is a trendy line of farmhouse-inspired colors Gaines has chosen that she and Chip use on their television show.

When it comes to color, choices are almost limitless in any line today. “There is an amazing array of colors now,” Kelly says. “We have a color matching tool. If you bring something in we can produce that color for you. It’s a service we provide at no charge.”

Sheen — also important to consider — is the reflectiveness of the paint. Sheen can go from flat to eggshell, satin, semi-gloss or gloss. “Some upper-end flat paints have the scrubbability of a satin paint,” Kelly says. “The molecules of new paints are so close together they don’t scuff or discolor. Clark & Kensington and Optimist are huge in that aspect.

“A lot of technology in past few years allows us to do a lot more with paint than we used to be able to do,” Kelly says. “Take the bathroom; people used to want a semi-gloss because of the steam and water. Now we can paint it with satin and still come up with a great looking paint that responds well to the moisture. You can use basically any sheen in any room now.”